This is round 7 in the debate between Lenardos and Jacobsen on the topic, "Do Extraordinary Events Require Extraordinary Evidence?".
Hi Paul,
You wrote:
“So, now, you’ve insisted on me answering what I’d want for
merely ordinary evidence. Well,
okay, let’s see. I’d like to
see writings of people that were indifferent, rather than convinced believers.
Like maybe some Roman historian who was either indifferent, or even on
the side of the Pharisees to report that there was some guy named Jesus causing
a ruckus. And I’d like this
person to be able to be a direct reporter of the ruckus, not somebody reporting
somebody else’s report a hundred years later.
So, I’m wanting historical references that are contemporary to Jesus,
(living at the same time as him and directly able to investigate the reports)
that is not a follower of Jesus. Note
that Josephus doesn't count: first,
its likely a forgery; and two, he wasn't born until after Jesus' purported death
so he wasn't an eyewitness. You
might say I’m wanting too much.”
Actually,
Paul, I never asked what you “wanted.” I asked if you or any other atheist
had a historical methodology that was objective, has been used in actual
historical research and didn’t utterly destroy the rest of the history of the
period. This is the question you have been missing for several rounds of our
discussion. I believe the answer you are looking for is, NO! You don’t have
anything resembling a real historical methodology. Your above “criteria” is
not based on methods that have been shown in historical research to bring us to
reliable conclusions, but rather based on what you, in retrospect, believe
cannot be met by the evidence we have. In other words, your response does not
answer the question, “How can we come to accurate conclusions about
history,” but, “How do I get out of having to believe the Resurrection
happened.” This is exactly what I accuse atheists of doing in my original
paper. Now you have confirmed it for your readers.
Next,
let’s look at your four points, just for fun:
“1) Is not the ending of Mark being in dispute a
significant issue? If you accept
that the ending is fraudulent, then you have to admit that people did doctor the
Gospels. And that the earliest
Gospel really ends with no Resurrection appearances. And once you admit
doctoring and forgeries happened, are you not left without any reason to assert
any of it is true?”
I
personally don’t think the long ending of Mark is fraudulent. But to determine
that we would need to use the methodology and criteria that is used in textual
criticism. We would also need to go through the ancient texts in the Greek. If
you really want to get into this, are you prepared to for the above?
As for the
rest of your question regarding the reason to assert any of the NT as true, this
issue and the 1 Jn issue give us ample reason to believe the rest of the text is
extremely accurate. For it is these kinds of issues that show us that the
methodology is working. In working with a text as large as the NT, we would
expect that there are going to be a lot of portions that are without doubt,
there are going to be some that we determine were definite errors, and a few
that we are not sure about. The real surprise is that we can say with confidence
that we know the Greek text we have reconstructed to be 99.5% pure. This is
totally remarkable. But, no one said it is 100% pure.
For the
sake of argument, let’s say that the long ending of Mark was added. We still
have a resurrection at the end of Mark, just no personal appearances. Mark still
affirms that Jesus rose from the dead. Mark doesn’t leave Him in the Tomb.
Mark doesn’t say, “No comment,” on this issue. You are still are faced
with a Jesus, who claimed to be God and demonstrated his power over man’s
greatest and final enemy, Death. The question is, what will you do with that
information?
“2) This one is not a repeat, but I’m adding to the list:
Is not also the ‘Johanine comma’ that shows that the Doctrine of the
Trinity is not genuine also significant? If
Christianity can’t even depend on the Doctrine of the Trinity to be genuine,
how can anything else be depended on?”
Actually,
during the intense debate that took place over the doctrine of the Trinity in
the fourth century, I have not been able to find anyone that used that verse to
try and defend the Trinity. In other words, the Trinity stands regardless of
this verse. If you would like to hear a defense of the Trinity, without that
verse, allow me to recommend one of my teachers, Walter Martin. Here are a
couple of links to an audio lecture on the subject:
Part 1:
http://www.waltermartin.org/trinity.ram
Part 2:
http://www.waltermartin.org/trinity2.ram
As I said
before, it is verses like this that helps us know we have a great, reconstructed
text today. Using textual criticism we have been able to determine that this
verse was not in the original. That is why no modern translation contains it. In
other words, the process works.
3) “Back from my old list: If I said I walked to the store, or I said I flapped my arms
and flew to the store, would you not want more evidence for the latter?
And if so, would you not be affirming that extraordinary events do indeed
require extraordinary evidence?"
Actually,
I am probably not the right guy to ask that question to. As a professional
Magician, I see people and things flying without apparent physical means of
support all the time.
But, maybe
this hits at the real heart of the problem. If a group of your friends came back
from Las Vegas and told you about a couple of dozen extraordinary events they
witnessed at Lance Burton’s or David Coperfield’s show, would you demand
from them “extraordinary evidence?” I doubt it. Why? Because, the
implications of these fantastic events don’t effect your worldview. You know
that there is a rational, naturalistic explanation for what your friends saw. If
I may be so bold as to suggest that if there were a rational, naturalistic
explanation for the resurrection of Jesus, you would not be asking for
extraordinary evidence for that either. You see events are just that, events.
That is why no extraordinary evidence is required, nor can extraordinary
evidence be objectively quantified. It
looks like the demand for extraordinary evidence for extraordinary events is
just a red herring to lead us away from the real problem, the atheists dislike
of the implications.
Let me
know what you think about this. Have we hit the real problem?
“4) Since we both agree that there is good evidence that Constantine
was indeed Emperor of Rome, would you bet your eternal soul on it?
If the answer is no, but you would bet your soul that Jesus was
resurrected, then would you not be admitting that in fact we really aren’t
talking about historical evidence at all—and therefore your entire argument
about historical evidence has been just a rouse and a farce?”
I think
this question is very telling about our differences in approaching these issues
and it fits nicely into what I wrote regarding your previous question. You see,
for me, the evidence for Constantine being emperor, when filtered through an
objective historical methodology, shows that it is sufficient, so I have to
affirm it as true, regardless of the implications. It is the only rational
position to take. Your question, on the other hand, suggests we look at the
implications of the events first, and if they don’t offend our
presuppositions, then we can examine them using standard objective
methodologies. That is truly irrational.
The facts
show that Constantine was emperor, regardless of its effect on our souls, and
the facts show that Jesus rose from the dead, regardless of its effect on our
souls.
I think at
this point it is safe for us to do away with the pretense that your objection to
the resurrection is based on some lofty, intellectual arguments. You have
already declared several times through our rounds that your reasons are
subjective, speculative and based on preference. The fact is that given any
objective historical methodology that has been successfully demonstrated to come
to reliable conclusions, the conclusion we always get is, Jesus rose from the
dead. If you don’t want to put your trust in him or follow him, then that is
your decision. But you should at least try to salvage some of your intellectual
integrity by admitting that based on the evidence we must conclude that the
event of the resurrection took place.
Regards,
Brady
At the very least, I have to credit Lenardos for keeping his composure for round 7. I came at him pretty hard and heavy on round 6, and wondered if he might give up out of frustration if nothing else. Of course, he also hit pretty strong in his round 6 as well. At any rate, since Lenardos “turned down the heat” a notch here in round 7, I will respond likewise.
Lenardos
spends round 7 responding to my answer to his question about “objective
historical measures”, and then responds to my four questions. As far as the subject of objective historical measures, he
responds that I provided no such measures.
I disagree. What did I ask for? I
asked for reports from non-believers who were witnesses to the events. Is this unreasonable, or not objective? No, I don’t think so.
If you want to find out if, say, President Bush is doing a good job, do
you only ask his cabinet members? If
you wanted to find out if Sadam Hussein tortured political enemies, do you only
ask his Republican Guard? No, of course not. What I asked for is
exactly what anybody would ask for, unless of course it is about somebody's
religion. Then all of a sudden it becomes unreasonable.
Moreover, Lenardos keeps insisting that what I requested would destroy all of history. Fortunately, that is not the case. I’ve often used Emperor Constantine as an analogy. And, as it so happens, we do have writings of friends and foes who were alive during his rule. If it were the case that all we had on Constantine was written by worshipers of his that wrote forty years after his death, would we consider these reports trustworthy? Of course not! If it were true that is all we had, we might roughly guess that some of what these people had written was right, and make guesses of what actually happened based on these writings. But if this were the case, we would have to conclude that what we know about Constantine was simply suspect and that’s all there would be to say. But since we actually do have writings by friends and foes during his life, we can say that we have some reasonable confidence in the historicity of Constantine. At this point I would like to make something clear that I perhaps haven't made sufficiently clear: I would use the same measure to judge the worthiness of the historical record of the non-supernatural events of Jesus' life as I would use to judge the worthiness of the historical record of non-supernatural events of Constantine. It is only the supernatural events of the NT that I would demand "extraordinary evidence."
Lenardos
reiterates claims of
accuracy
of the NT and says, "the real surprise is that we can say with confidence
that we know the Greek text we have reconstructed to be 99.5% pure."
Dang, Lenardos sure is stubborn on this...
J
I think I've already shown this claim to be all baloney. As already noted,
even if some of the possible discrepancies are trivial, there are still more
than 0.5% disputable verses, based on the manuscripts we have. Secondly,
since you've got zero manuscripts for the first fifty years after their believed
authorship, so you can't possibly have any confidence of anything. You
don't know what happened in the first fifty years because you have zero
evidence. Once again, as I noted in my last post it is you, not me, that
is making a positive claim that you know "with confidence" what
happened during a period of which you have utterly no evidence what so ever.
For some
of my following arguments, I will use as my reference Dan Barker, author of
Losing
Faith in Faith: From Preacher to
Atheist. No doubt he will
be claimed a biased source as he is now an atheist.
But, I believe his arguments are usually sound.
And of course, he certainly spent many years looking at the equation from
the other side, having been a preacher. And
more importantly, he is far better educated than I on these issues—and I dare
say better educated than Mr. Lenardos on these issues.
Here is a
link to an article of his on the historicity of the Resurrection:
http://ffrf.org/tm.php?tm=http://www.ffrf.org/articles/rise.html
At least
according to Dan Barker, (from the above linked article,) it so happens that we
know of lots of historians (roughly 40) that wrote of the period and region of
Jesus’ purported life, and not one mentions him! If Jesus was a real historical figure, it
should be easy to produce the evidence that I requested! And yet Lenardos
acts like I've requested something unreasonable.
Also, according to
Barker, there is indeed a consensus of critical scholars that the Resurrection
is a legend.
In a
previous round, I conceded a point that I’m now going to un-concede.
Very early in this debate, I made the claim that miracles are simply
incompatible with the historical method. But
I didn’t have a reference to back this claim up, so I conceded the point.
However, as I have found a reference for this point, again Dan Barker, I
will reintroduce it. I’d like to
quote from a debate transcript, where he responds to a charge of having a bias
against miracles:
http://www.ffrf.org/debates/barker_horner.html
But
the biggest problem with history and miracles is not the idea of a bias against
miracles. That's not the problem. The biggest problem is the built-in
incompatibility of the historical method with miracles.
History
has to require a naturalistic presupposition in order to work. It's just a tool.
All sciences are tools. No science claims to give us knowledge that is 100%
confident. No science does. We increase our confidence by testing, by
eliminating, by this and that, by falsifying. Some sciences tend to give us
pretty high confidence.
History,
of all of the legitimate sciences, is the weakest. It gives us information that
is further removed from what happened. So, therefore, historians must be all the
more careful in adhering to a naturalistic presupposition. Because otherwise,
you can't know anything through history. You can't, then, know that something
didn't happen according to the way someone said it. You need criteria for
weeding out what could happen and can't happen, based upon our past
observations.
So,
what I'm saying here -- please don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that this
rules out miracles. What I'm saying is, you can have miracles if you want; but
then you can't have history. You can't have them both. And if the only knowledge
we have of the resurrection of Jesus comes through history, and if history
requires a strict application of natural regularity through time, then that sort
of short-circuits the whole process, because history is all the Christians have
got.
It's
like saying I know there's a rainbow out there because I can hear it. You can't
hear a rainbow, right? Well, history is the same way. It doesn't pretend to
"hear" the supernatural. It doesn't pretend to have anything to say
about it, or to analyze it. History is just a limited tool. Any historian who
believes in miracles is building a house on the sand, because, if the miracles
happened, then anything goes. Anything anybody says we're just going to have to
take, because we don't have any way of saying, "No, that's not
possible."
Additionally,
from the other article of Barker that I referenced above, here is some more on
the subject:
When examining
artifacts from the past, historians assume that nature worked back then as it
does today; otherwise, anything goes. American patriot Thomas Paine, in The
Age of Reason, asked: "Is it more probable that nature should go out of
her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time,
nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of
lies have been told in the same time; it is, therefore, at least millions to
one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie."
It is a fact of
history and of current events that human beings exaggerate, misinterpret, or
wrongly remember events. They have also fabricated pious fraud. Most believers
in a religion understand this when examining the claims of other religions.
A messiah figure
coming back to life--appearing out of thin air and disappearing--is a fantastic
story, by anyone's standard, and that is what makes it a miracle claim. If dead
people today routinely crawled out of their graves and went back to work, a
resurrection would have little value as proof of God's power. The fact that it
is impossible or highly unlikely is what makes it a miracle.
And that is what removes it from the reach of history.
History is
limited; it can only confirm events that conform to natural regularity. This is
not an anti-supernaturalistic bias against miracles, as is sometimes claimed by
believers. The miracles may have happened, but in order to know they happened,
we need a different tool of knowledge. Yet except for faith (which is not a
science), to make a case for the resurrection of Jesus, history is the only tool
Christians have.
Therefore, based on this argument by Barker, I re-assert my earlier claim that verification of miracles is incompatible with the historical method.
Now,
to return to Lenardos’ comments, after his faulty complaints that my
requirements are unreasonable, he returns to his hyperbole of atheists just
“trying to get out of believing the Resurrection.”
That’s okay, Lenardos, I’m used to it now… J
Seriously, all he’s got is the writings of convinced believers of his
religion that were written years after the death of the purported Messiah, which
don’t even agree with each other. Even
if he’s got a billion copies of this, that’s all he’s got.
And he seems to genuinely think he’s really got some strong evidence. It just blows my mind. I
could produce a billion copies of the writings of followers of Islam, or any
other religion, and he’d correctly conclude that doesn’t qualify as
impartial, historical evidence. And yet, when I
do the same to his billion copies of writings of followers of his religion, he
thinks I must be just stubborn or trying to weasel out of it or something.
It just blows my mind… J
Next, “just
for fun,” Lenardos comments on my four questions. So, let’s move on to those.
I asked about the ending of Mark. He
says he isn’t so sure the longer ending isn’t genuine.
Well, the NIV, a very conservative translation states, “the most
reliable early manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have Mark
16:9-20.” So, this seems to be
pretty strong evidence that the ending is a later addition.
Lenardos says that even if the ending of Mark is a later addition, “We
still have a resurrection at the end of Mark, just no personal appearances. Mark
still affirms that Jesus rose from the dead. Mark doesn’t leave Him in the
Tomb.” Well, let’s suppose that
the Gospel of Mark (without the appearances) alone describes what actually
happened. Well, there are lots and
lots of possible explanations to an empty tomb that are far more likely than
somebody having been raised from the dead.
The women could have gone to the wrong tomb. Somebody could have stolen the body. Lots of things. And, simply based on probabilities, the
percentage of people to have made mistakes is very high; the percentage of
people who have lied or exaggerated is high; and the percentage of people who
have risen from the grave is exceptionally low. So, based on simple
probability, one could easily conclude the probability of the empty grave report
being accidentally or intentionally in error vs. a genuine resurrection is
easily "billions and billions" to one.
After all,
suppose I were to claim that my Messiah, “Bob the Raingod” is the One True
God, and I know it to be true because his tomb was empty. Wouldn’t you likewise conclude that even if Bob’s tomb
really was empty, other explanations are far more likely?
In my next
question, I charge that the ‘Johanine comma’ cripples the Doctrine of the
Trinity. Lenardos responds, “actually, during the intense debate that took
place over the doctrine of the Trinity in the fourth century, I have not been
able to find anyone that used that verse to try and defend the Trinity.”
Well, this may well be true. What
he neglects to mention is that the tool of choice during this “intense
debate” was torture and execution. The
Christian “civil war” between the Catholics (who taught the Trinity) and the
Arians (who did not) was rather brutal. Roman
historian Ammianus Marcellinus said, "The enmity of the Christians towards
each other surpassed the fury of savage beasts against man."
Fortunately, Lenardos has not been employing fourth century “intense
debate” procedures in our debate…
I’m
being flippant, and probably should not be.
But Lenardos bringing up the “intense debate” is as if we are talking
about a group of people arguing at a round table is just a farce.
That Catholics were the more successful in eliminating the competition
and that is why we have the doctrine of the Trinity.
It is as simple as that.
Note: After writing the first version of this paragraph, I did go ahead and
play the audio tracks Lenardos linked to. And, I have to concede that
Martin did a good job of defending the Trinity without that scripture.
Even so, Christians didn't come up with this doctrine until the fourth century.
If this doctrine was so important, you’d think it wouldn’t have taken
four hundred years for someone to have figured it out.
Martin says that if you don't believe in the Trinity, you are in danger of
loosing your soul. So, all the Christians until the doctrine was
originated are in hell? Well, at any rate, since I concede that Martin
overall did
a good job, so I'll concede this point.
The next
question, I asked if Lenardos would want more evidence if I said I flapped my
arms and flew to the store than if I said I walked to the store.
Lenardos’ response was, um, “indirect” would be a polite term.
J
(I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader to guess what term I would
rather use. J
J)
Lenardos says he
is a magician, and perhaps not the best person to ask.
Well, I did ask, and one might notice that he didn’t actually answer
yes or no. Of importance to note is,
I did not ask if he would believe that I could make it appear as if I flapped
my arms and flew to the store—I asked if he would believe I actually did so
and with the same amount of evidence that he would accept for my having walked
to the store. That was the
question, and it remains unanswered. Hmm,
I wonder why…
Lenardos
continues, “If a group of your friends came back from Las Vegas and told you
about a couple of dozen extraordinary events they witnessed at Lance Burton’s
or David Copperfield’s show, would you demand from them 'extraordinary
evidence?' I doubt it. Why? Because, the implications of these fantastic
events don’t effect [sic] your worldview.”
Actually, there would be an even simpler explanation as to why I
wouldn’t demand ‘extraordinary evidence’—the extremely simple answer is
that the apparent "extraordinary events," such as sawing a woman in half,
didn’t really happen--they were just tricks!
Now if my friends tried to claim, “no, it wasn’t a trick, David
Copperfield really did saw a woman in half and put her back together”, I most
certainly would demand extraordinary evidence!
If I would have laughed any harder at this "argument" by Lenardos, I
would have had to change my underwear. J
In fact,
as a magician, Lenardos should know better than most people that the eye is not
always reliable. I
would think that he should be all the more skeptical of reports of actual
supernatural events, not less so. Anyway, as
I noted earlier, I’m a mythist—I don’t think there was any Jesus Christ at
all and he is entirely mythical. However,
I’m not “dogmatic” about it, I acknowledge that there is of course some
possibility that there was some actual Jesus Christ.
I don’t think that Jesus was a magician, but his having been a magician
is certainly at least as plausible of an explanation as his having been actually
raised from the dead.
Lenardos
then says something that I can agree with, “if I may be so bold as to suggest
that if there were a rational, naturalistic explanation for the resurrection of
Jesus, you would not be asking for extraordinary evidence for that either.”
Obviously. Why would this be
surprising? But of course, then we
would no longer talking about an extraordinary event.
Mr. Lenarodos, did you somehow forget that we were debating extraordinary
events? I swear, Lenardos "arguments" here had me busting a gut!
For my fourth question, hey, Lenardos had a reasonable answer! (I really do try to be fair, believe it or not… J) However, I think he reads a bit too much into my question. Perhaps it is my fault, perhaps I should have made the question, "would you bet your life on it" instead of your soul. What I was really trying to get at is, even if Jesus Christ having been risen from the grave was the best answer to the available evidence (its not, in my opinion of course, but if...) is it really sufficiently proven to be worthy to be considered to be worth staking one's life or one's soul? Like for my analogy to Emperor Constantine, I would say that from my understanding, it is indeed true that our best evidence shows that he was indeed emperor of Rome. But if someone stuck a gun to my head and asked me if I was willing to bet my life that Constantine was emperor of Rome, I don't think I would want to.
Which brings me back to some words I already quoted from Dan Barker, "History, of all of the legitimate sciences, is the weakest. It gives us information that is further removed from what happened." As I said, even if a Resurrection was what best fit the evidence, (it isn't but if..) it still wouldn't be conclusive evidence that it happened.
Also, in my question 4, I challenged him to admit his historical arguments have been nothing more than "a rouse and a farce." Funny, he didn't do that. J My challenge to him may have prompted his return challenge to drop "the pretense that [my] objection to the resurrection is based on some lofty, intellectual arguments." Well, I'm afraid I have to decline his challenge as well... J He claims that I "have already declared several times through our rounds that [my] reasons are subjective, speculative and based on preference." Oh, c'mon, I never said any such thing--though he has tried several times (unsuccessfully) to twist my words into that. But that is merely his "spin". Where I have speculated, I have admitted it is speculation. But an admission of speculation is far more honest than his claims that he isn't speculating despite making positive claims about what happened during periods of which there is zero evidence at all. There is nothing wrong with speculation when you admit it is speculation. Every scientific theory there is started out as "speculation". He claims of his conclusions being superior is simply predicated on the fact that he isn't willing to admit they he is indeed speculating.
In
summary, Lenardos kept his composure, and has "hung in there".
But as far as his "arguments" go, I found myself wondering if Lenardos is a
magician or a comedian... J
Follow the 'Next' link to the next round.
